We, Anthem and the Garden of Eden: A Look at Women as Catalysts in Literature

Women have been changing the world since the dawn of time: from 3500 BC, when Egyptian women invented beer, to 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, to just this month, when Nancy Pelosi became the first-ever female Speaker of the House. So it's no surprise that in both the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and the novella Anthem by Ayn Rand, women act as catalysts for the necessary change in the dystopian societies pictured.

In Anthem, men and women are divided, set apart in society. Taking any kind of notice of the opposite sex is forbidden. The story's protagonist, Equality 7-2521, is aware of this, but although he tries, he is unable to ignore the woman he later falls in love with, as is indicated in this selection from the novel:

"We wish to write this name. We wish to speak it, but we dare not speak it above a whisper. For men are forbidden to take notice of women, and women are forbidden to take notice of men. But we think of one among women, they whose name is Liberty 5-3000, and we think of no others."

Even though Equality 7-2521 "knew the illness" of recognizing and eventually falling in love with Liberty 5-3000 (whom he dubs "The Golden One"), this cannot stop the human instinct of love, and it is apparent from a later passage that he did not want to obey the rules set forth by society; rather, Liberty 5-3000 is one of the causes of Equality 7-2521's eventual abandonment of their society.

"We stood still; for the first time did we know fear, and then pain. And we stood still that we might not spill this pain more precious than pleasure."

At the end of the novel, Liberty 5-3000 follows Equality 7-2521 out of the city after he flees from prosecution by the Council, their society's government. The two enter into a new life in the mountains, where they discover a house filled with books. Upon reading, they discover the word I and the "forbidden word," ego.